An important step towards a scientific understanding of complex systems will be the objectification and quantification of information that carries semantics, i.e., sense and meaning. In this paper a concept is developed according to which the general aspects of semantics-such as novelty, pragmatic relevance, selectivity, complexity and others-are understood as elements of a "semantic code". However, in contrast to its traditional usage, the term "code" does not refer to a set of rules for

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... ment or translation of symbols, but rather to a reservoir of value elements, from which the recipient configures a value scale for the evaluation of semantic information. A quantitative measure for the value scale is proposed.